Enjoy The Scenic Path & Win: Parks Board Game

By Christopher Guyton | February 6th, 2020 | Categories: Board Game Reviews, Board Games, Product Review

Game night getting a little intense? Try out the Parks Board Game! Take a wander through the endless hiking trails of the great USA and win!

Parks is a relaxing worker placement, set collection game from designer Henry Audubon. You may recognize his name as the designer of another great game, Space Park. In Parks, you play as a pair of hikers traveling along a set of trails. Each game plays from thirty to sixty minutes. You can play anywhere from one to five players.

Parks: $49.99

Get It For Less At Miniature Market

PARKS celebrates national parks around the U.S. with art from the Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series. Players take on the role of two hikers as they trek across a new trail each season to see sites and visit parks. Each journey is unique with gear, canteens, and photos earned along the way. Welcome to PARKS!

Contents:

Rulebook
Board
48 Tarot Park Cards
82 Small Cards
12 Trail Tiles
5 Campfires
10 Hikers
30 Sunshine
30 Water
16 Mountains
12 Wildlife
24 Photos
1 Camera
1 Enamel First Hiker

Ages: 10+
Players: 1-5

Game Length: 40-60 minutes

Enjoy The Scenic Path & Win: Parks

Each game simulates a year divided by the four seasons. Every season the trail gets a little bit longer. This is represented by a set of tiles placed in a random order each round with a new tile being added every time. As you move throughout the trails you will see sights and collect resources that act as memories. These memories are resource tokens that represent mountains, forests, water, and sunsets. There are also animal tokens that act as wild tokens. Wild animals, haha get it? Anyway no matter what the specific animal is they all count as the same thing.

Each player will also get a canteen that can be used for various abilities once filled with water. There are many other types of gear that can aid you on the journey. Turn order plays similar to Tokaido whereas the last player piece goes next. Most of the time only one hiker can occupy a tile at a time, but you can use your campfire once per season to break this rule.

When your hiker makes it to the trail end you have a few options. First, you can reserve a park card and take the first player token. Second, you can visit a park and take the card into your tableau. To do this you must spend all the resources shown on the park card. Wild animals can count as any token. You can also gain new equipment cards that will help out quite a bit.

Another method for scoring other than collecting park visits is photos. A player who visits the vista may take a photograph. That player will then take the camera token from whoever has it. This token grants a discount for taking photos. This player also gets to take a photo at the trail end as a bonus.

Parks is a fantastic game with remarkable component quality. When I first opened this game up and laid everything out I was quite impressed. Finding that the gameplay was fun and solid added to my joy. The artwork is simply gorgeous each park’s card really conveys what that particular park is known for. The components are kept organized by the always welcome Game Trayz. And while not absolutely necessary, the playmat that you can purchase is stunning and really keeps the game area tidy.

I highly recommend Parks, it’s a fun relaxing game that is just beautiful and nice to look at. If you want a fun set collection game that has great table presentation, then you can’t go wrong with a stroll throughout Parks. Keep an eye out on Kickstarter for the camping expansion coming soon also.